The Grand Californian - worth the $$$?

[MomMaxer]

I need help forming an opinion, hive mind activate! Thanks in advance.

Question 1: Is buying into the Grand Californian as our home resort worth the additional price per point over most Florida properties? This is a $15-20k decision for us, so...help!

Question 2: Is booking Grand Californian within the 7 mos window (if not one's own home resort) really that much of a challenge?

Contextual Details:
- We live in Seattle and love Disneyland. West coast travel is easier/cheaper for us.
- When we go to WDW, We'd likely explore and experiment around various WDW properties vs return over and over to just one resort.
- We will almost certainly buy all/bulk of our points on resale market.
- We want to have about 300-350 pts per year.

Talk to me. I'm all (mouse) ears.

 

[Jperiod]

I just went through all this. Yes, it's really hard to book at 7 months and becoming increasingly harder. And I believe once Star Wars Land is complete, it will not only be even harder, it will increase the resale price of the resort.

I also did a cost comparison of the average resale purchase price, length of contract left, and annual dues and found that there was only about $5-6K/100 points in difference between the cheapest resort and the most expensive resort after 30 years (when we personally might be slowing down in age). That's not enough of a savings to gamble where I want to stay each year.

I figured if I wanted a good resort in WDW, I'd just rent out my points and rent the resort I want since VGC is always desirable.

Lastly, Disney doesn't appear to exercise ROFR for VGC resales! We just passed ROFR for our contract yesterday! We also wanted 300 pts, but settled for a well priced/loaded contract of 240 pts that will meet our needs for several trips before we need to buy more.

 

[Cyberc1978]

I would say it really depends on you if it’s worth it or not.

If you expect to go on a regular basis I would recommend buying VGC. When the 7 month window opens a lot of members try to book, some are lucky but most are not. So yes it’s a challenge but it can be done, but don’t expect to get lucky each time.

Also I would not recommend buying into VGC and using those points to book WDW, you pay a hefty premium and therefore the points are best spend at VGC. If you wish to go to WDW also maybe you should buy a smaller amount of VGC points and some WDW points.

I haven’t followed the number of VGC contracts available as resale but if possible instead of buying one big contract you should split up the buyin on several contracts. This way IF you need to downsize at some point you could start out selling one contract and still keep the others.

 

[RangerPooh]

Years ago when we considered buying VGC as we lived in WA but decided to pass as we didn't feel that the value was there. We did look into using our WDW DVC points at the VGC at the 7 month window and experienced difficulty in doing so. Availability was hard to find! We were successfully able to find availability twice and eventually gave up.

 

[limace]

We are in Oregon and just passed ROFR on our first contract, which is at the grand. Like you, we love both parks but DL is or favorite, plus travel so much easier and cheaper. Maintenance fees are low, so why points are expensive and point usage requirements are high, I don't think the difference is quite as dramatic long term. My plan is to have enough for five to seven nights every other year, and eventually get enough WDW points to do alternate year stays there-those would be longer stays but we'd be able to buy cheaper points there.

 

[bumbershoot]

I don't think the grand is worth it at all personally. We bought bay lake because there are so many decent places in the Disneyland area we would rather stay at than the dark, not nice enough for the money IMO, Grand.

Question 2: Is booking Grand Californian within the 7 mos window (if not one's own home resort) really that much of a challenge?

Whenever I plan a trip to Disneyland I do, for fun, check out availability. And I've never once seen my intended days available there.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

If you want to book a Villa at the Grand Californian, you really need to own there, especially for studios. You also need to be willing to book at 11-7 months, bias towards the 11 end of that 4 month period.

It's debatable on if this is totally "worth it." Depends on family size (bigger units may be more "worth it"), vacation patterns, hotel preferences, etc. If you cannot plan 7+ months out, it's not worth it. If you don't care about villa amenities, staying regularly at Good Neighbor hotels will be cheaper in the long term.

I certainly wouldn't buy Saratoga with hopes of regularly booking VGC.

 

[skippytx]

Howdy,

My opinion regarding you questions

Buying into VGC only makes sense if you're going to use the points at VGC and exercise the 11 month advantage. 7 months is hard, next to impossible to book, especially around holidays and race weekend. Buying VGC points to use at WDW doesn't make sense to me.

DL and WDW are two different beasts to me. We're buying at BLT, the most significant reason being it's location. With DL being so much smaller, location is less of a factor. We stayed at the Fairfield earlier this year when we went to DL and the walking distance from the Fairfield to the park entrance is roughly the same distance as it is from BLT to Magic Kingdom (a little less than 1/2 a mile). DL to us is also a much shorter trip. We can get our fill of DL in 3 park days, where we usually spend at least a full week (or more) at WDW. So the additional DVC villa amenities in a 1BD villa matter more to us on the longer trip.

I'm not sure I would use points to stay at VGC even if I could get a room booked at 7 months. I feel I'd be better off renting our BLT points and paying cash to stay off property for DL.

 

[Toreby]

We're in the Seattle area as well. I personally love VGC, but just can't bring myself to pay those prices. We stayed on AKV points earlier this year (1BR). It was in late April, and we had to stay the first night off site. Depending on when you go you might be able to find 1BR available at 7 months, but I would not count on studios being available. Don't buy any other property and expect to be able to book at VGC on a regular basis unless you plan on going at the lowest possible demand times and stay in 1BR's.

 

[Shellyred8]

If you want to stay at VGC, you should buy there. It is quite challenging/next to impossible to get something at 7 months out, based on my experience. It will be easier for you to use your VGC points at WDW than it will be to use WDW points at VGC.

We happened to luck into a 4 night stay last year in a Studio at VGC. I loved staying there! I loved the atmosphere and the location. I really felt like I was in the Disney Bubble. If we were going to plan on going back there on any sort of a regular schedule, we would definitely look into buying there.

As others have mentioned, once the new Star Wars land opens up, it will be even harder to get rooms there and I would bet that the resale prices will go up too. So, if you are going to buy there, I would do it sooner rather than later.

Good luck with your decision!!

 

[Jperiod]

Oh another factor in us buying there is the early entry perks, which will be even more important with SW land. I also wouldn't be surprised if maxpass becomes some sort of on-site perk as well.

We always stay in rooms with kitchens, and suites with 1 bedroom or more, so if I'm gonna walk to my hotel, I'd rather walk to VGC. I'm so over waiting for the ART or standing in line for buses/trams back to the disney parking lots.

Personally, I don't think it's a waste to use VGC points at WDW. There's little overall cost difference between places like BLT, Poly, VGF, and VGC.

 

[_auroraborealis_]

Personally, I don't think it's a waste to use VGC points at WDW. There's little overall cost difference between places like BLT, Poly, VGF, and VGC.

I think some of the perspective is that it can be difficult to get monorail resorts at 7 months, and if you regularly want to use VGC points at WDW, you're more likely to get one of the cheap resorts like SSR, OKW or AKV, whose points cost at least 30% less than VGC (often much less than that).

 

[longboard55]

If it is a cash sale, I just do not see how you can lose. There are just very limited rooms in California and huge demand to stay on the Disney property. I really do not see how it would ever go down in price. We spent $27000 on 200 points and can get rooms worth $5000 a year. That is a pretty good return. Its more of a question if we could afford to stay there if we were not DVC members, the answer is no we would never spend that much.

 

[MomMaxer]

Thanks for sharing your experiences everyone! It's much appreciated and helps. You all make good points and are helping me think this through.

To expand:

- booking 7+ mos out is no problem for us.

- We can get away with a studio, but We're more likely to go for a 1 bedroom when we book our stays. We have 2 small kids (and as foster parents will likely have little ones for awhile), and there's only so much tiptoeing around in a dark silent hotel room by 8pm a person can do.

- Transportation logistics of either option we choose is important to us. Because strollers and naptime are necessary evils. (That said, we hired the most magical woman ever, Nanny Deb, to help us with our kids at DL last time and she talked the sleep-resistant 3 yo old into taking a "princess nap" in the stroller with the ease of Mary Poppins, and the help of a glittery scarf she pulled from her bag, right in the middle of Fantasyland. Magic is real!) Perhaps I should ask folks experienced with small kids at the parks to weigh in on WDW transport. At quick searching it seemed like there was a different opinion for every set of mouse ears at the park! Should we buy in at WDW, I'd likely still buy a small Amt of direct from Disney points and perhaps then could just use the 25% discount and pay cash at the DLH. (Please correct me if I've misunderstood anything there.)

Again, thanks everyone for weighing in!

 

[disneynutz]

Buy where you intend to vacation more often.

Bill

 

[wbl2745]

We own at VGC and always book at 11 months. We've never had any trouble getting the type of unit we wanted, from a studio to the Grand Villa. We live in Utah so Disneyland is "just down the highway" from us. If you really want to go to VGC frequently I'd give serious consideration to buying at VGC. Regarding using our points at WDW, we've always been able to get what we wanted at 7 months.

 

[MomMaxer]

Regarding using our points at WDW, we've always been able to get what we wanted at 7 months.

Thanks that's awesome to hear. How often have you gone to WDW?

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

If DL is your main focus and you want to always stay at VGC then it will likely be a better DVC experience if you buy there. It's certainly possible to book at 7 months and wanting a 1BR helps with that but it's usually a be online right at 8am eastern (so 5am for you) and being fast with the mouse clicks. When you go to DL and WDW also affects availability at both.

 

[MikeRx]

Thank you to everyone for answering these so candidly! We decided to make an offer on a VGC contract tonight! We accepted the sellers counter offer and will likely find out tomorrow if we are moving forward. We will consider a WDW contract in 2018 if the market cools off/stabilizes. For now we feel the smaller VGC will suite our needs as we live in Arizona and make frequent 3-4 day trips to DLR. The wisdom on this thread really convinced us that this was the best course of action. The 11 month window is a big deal for us. Now I will have my fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.

Mike

 

[emmagator]

Not sure if it's worth the $$$, but that didn't stop us from buying our first contract last month. DL is an annual trip for us, so the decision was easy.